It took imagination to initiate the peace process and it requires a fresh injection to overcome the renewed unrest in Northern Ireland, which has sent tremors through the collective consciousness. As tens of thousands of people demonstrated at the recent peace rallies, there is no desire among the vast majority to return to the cauldron of suffering and pain of the Troubles.

They have begun to taste a different future, one barely imagined before the Good Friday agreement in 1998. Imagination helps because it enables us to envisage new possibilities. It gives insight and understanding into what is, but it can also inspire us to see a different and better way for society. Linked to courage, it paves the way for a better tomorrow.

It has taken courage for a young man I know to turn down the chance to go to a grammar school having passed his 11-plus, a measure that divides people from a young age. A bright, articulate boy from a Protestant background, who would have thrived within the grammar school system, has chosen to be with his Catholic friends. He has been influenced by his parents, who have had the courage to see beyond middle-class convention and to make one small contribution to the rebuilding of a future for their children.

If the peace process is to develop and withstand the threats posed by the recent murders, there has to be a cultivating of new attitudes and new ways of living that build community; ways which help to dismantle the sectarian systems, reinterpret binding memories and traditions that can hold many people fearful and territorial. A way that heals the wounds of the past and the feelings of threat, betrayal and injustice.

It's going to take ongoing imagination to build a future for Northern Ireland that moves it from cumbersome, external, legislative reforms to a radical transformation in attitude and actions. Without such, its citizens will have to live with the compromise of a shared-out future rather than a truly shared future. Compromises reached on superficial, external and purely pragmatic measures don't lead to any real or lasting commitment to cohabitation and community.

Peace processes require peacemakers, and Christians, called to follow the radical Christ, are summoned to participate in his radical agenda for change, ie where you learn to forgive, love your enemies, work for peace, have a bias for the poor and welcome the stranger. Peacemakers embrace the courage to think and act in the spirit of the non-conformist Christ, who broke down social, religious and political barriers and who looked for the signs of His Kingdom, not in the size of congregations or the look of church buildings but to the fruits of reconciliation and a deep peace process that is rooted in the transformation of the human heart and how people relate to God, self and their neighbour.

The church, with imagination, can share and serve a culture in change by proclaiming and living out a new social order where welcome, acceptance, forgiveness and love are common characteristics; where fear, judgment, oppression, blame and exclusion have no place; and where the power of love, as opposed to the love of power, is the means by which the ways of God are known. A community where diversity, far from being a reason to exclude, is celebrated.

The kind of community created by Jesus, who was able to incorporate within his disciples Matthew, a tax collector and Roman collaborator, and a former terrorist, Simon the Zealot, who found in Christ and the values of his Kingdom a new way of living. A way that leads to a dismantling of sectarianism, racism and sexism, removes the seeds of violence and unrest, envisaging a different tomorrow, imagining a future of lasting peace. A future where a land and its people become indiscriminately hospitable, where beauty emerges out of brokenness, feuding is replaced by friendship and conflict by community.

• Roy Searle is one of the leaders of the Northumbria Community and a former president of the Baptist Union